Like many other reviewers, I've been wearing the Classics for years, 15 years in my case. I'm also amazed at how the quality has deteriorated in recent years. I just threw away my current pair after less than a year. The previous pair lasted about 15 months. I thought I'd give Minnetonka one last chance since I thought at the time that maybe they had bottomed out and were about to turn around like some other shoe companies had. Bad idea. The leather on these loafers gets thinner with every purchase. The laces on this pair, like the previous ones, broke after about 6 months. The laces felt flimsy and fragile out of the box; turns out they were. I won't try to understand why they went down so spectacularly. I'll leave it to the business school class to write a business case for their decline. Instead, I will spend time looking for a replacement, which I should have done a few years ago.